The most terrifying part of any campaign is when the players at last wiggle free of your grasp and escape the railroad plot you’ve devised.

This marks the first time our hapless group has broken from the plot as set down by Tolkien himself. What does this mean? Is the whole thing going off the rails now? Has our hapless DM finally lost control? Will he cheat in order to stick to his predetermined script?

Everyone knows there’s no such thing as female dwarves, partially because the beards make them impossible to differentiate from the male ones, and paritally because so few women play DnD and the ones who do never play dwarves or half-orcs, and almost always play elves or half-elves. :-p

I dunno if there is really a lack of girls playing, or if they just don’t want to play with you. ‘m sure it depends on your personal hygiene. But as a girl I have a goliath, dragonborn, and a diva. So it isn’t necessarily an elf all the time. I mean, when a girl is in the mood to “SMASH MOAR BLOODBAGS” pretty much anything but an elf will do.

Actually in The Realm I made a Giant (same as half orc) wizard, she had low intell because Giants favor stregth but come on a giant casta Fire Ball and still has enough streth to tak you on hand to hand?

I laos in a 3rd ed game made a Elf Paladin, she had Frodo’s dice however, in fact she was so unlucky the DM in a fit of pitty had us find a tree that grew +1 swords, she botched the roll that everyone else got fine, was squered and had to SAVE against bleading the rest of the campaign she was at half health…and it wen’t down hill from there…

I’ve actually got a Female Dwarven Fighter at the moment, another friend of mine is playing a female Dwarven Cleric, In other campaigns i have humans and a couple half elves, I have never actually played an elf, i probably won’t be playing a halfling because i’m pretty sure my GM doesn’t like them but at some point i’m definitely playing a half-orc. I usually stick to humans though, I play Pathfinder, and humans get an extra feat at first level. Idk if that is true for any of the DnD editions, I don’t play them. Agreeing with some of the other responses, there are girls in my gaming group that have played just about every race available, and even times when there was a girl playing a guy (which was very hard to keep in mind for gender-specific pronouns) and vice versa. our two groups are made up of three women and four men for the first group, and four women and one man for the second. Trust me, there are definitely girl gamers. I know over a dozen of them in just my area.

Say, how exactly did the thing about female dwarves having beards get started? Cause, you know, the dwarf/beard relationship in Tolkien was cultural, not physical. (Looking at you, Jackson :/) Was it a DnD thing before the movies?

Always a tough situation. On the one hand, one of things I enjoy most as a DM is when the party does something completely clever and unexpected, and I need to figure out how the various NPCs react to it, and how events play out. On the other, killing a vital villain and derailing the whole story is a real pain. Sometimes you need to bend the rules (e.g., give the bad guy more hit points) to keep the story on track, but balance that with breaks in the party’s favor sometimes (to keep things reasonably fair).

Our group had the task of killing a quota of orcs in order to get money and information from a ruler. My character carried the pairs of orc eyeballs and earlobes as trophies. Later, being chased down a dark tunnel by angry orcs, he grabbed a few eyeballs from the bag and threw them on the floor behind the group. DM didn’t see that coming… Turns out you can trip (and seriously injure) orcs doing that – I believe one died outright, falling on its own weapon as it slipped.

Oh, and this comic is less funny than some of the others, but probably even more accurate than most, unfortunately. I wait (im)patiently to see what you do with the plot now…

Oh, and you should have had him check for concealment. Of course, in that situation, he would probably pass that, too. You know, like the arrogant player of a paladin who walked straight up to the massive dragon, said he would kill it (at level… 5, was it?), then proceeded to roll 3 natural 20s in a row (house-rule auto-death)… with the DMs own d20, no less. Oops.

I had a player do a similar thing at lev 6 to a balor… Grabed a sword from the guy’s own loot pile, threw it at the balor and got the 3x 20. Still nearly killed the party with the death throes. One blind bard and a psudodragon who was just out of the room were all the concious party members left

This one cracked me up. Reminded me of a game I ran in which I’d set up an encounter with two NPC goblin slaves: weaponless, dressed in rags and there solely for plot exposition. At first sight, one of my players shot one of unfortunate wretches through the head and killed him dead. After a moment of stunned disbelief, I had the other goblin shout, “No, not Morty!” (the best name I could come up with at the moment) just before he was killed as well. For their trouble, the players got a single gold coin as loot.

First off, this is funny, and it happens even to good DM’s… but it is avoidable.

First off… all the DMotR stories showcase a singular fault of the DM in question… he never rewards the PC’s for story related role playing. His players need remedial training. Basically, if the PC’s play along with his story they should be rewarded. If you do this enough, they behave better.

I recently had some fairly low level good PC’s run into a young adult silver dragon who’s father had been killed. Being young he had little experience with humanoids and little emotional control. So he was rampaging around the countryside. The PC’s were rewarded with half the XP the dragon was worth in combat for calming him, at risk of their lives, and getting him to behave more acceptably in his quest for justice. Had they fought the dragon it probably would have resulted in a TPK (total party kill)- if only because he had two younger sisters hidden nearby watching his back and ready to jump in the fray. The party might have managed the young adult… but there’s no way they could manage a young adult and two juveniles.

So what about a villain that critical to the plot ? Well, he should be well protected with a skill set to match his role in the story. In Gollum’s case the protection is simple- he stays away from the attack range of the PC’s and he remains stealthy at all times. Give him enough levels in Rogue to accomplish this almost constantly against the party.

He should also have the durability so that only a concerted effort by the PC’s should derail his role in your plot. There should be no way a single attack should slay this character. Even at 3x critical with Max Damage, plus any spell stored magic the characters can muster or their most powerful slaying magic. Of course, if the PC’s come up with a cunning plan to lure him in and capture/kill him it should have a chance of working… don’t frustrate them just for your own story thrill.

All this aside… this sort of an event is a planned encounter, and should be run as such. With the DM cautious to control the thing. Always engineer encounters so they can further the plot as planned… but so PC’s can’t gain too much of a boon.

The DM’s purpose for this encounter is exactly the same as Tolkien’s… to inform the audience/PC’s that they are being watched. The puzzle for them is to figure out who is tracking them, which should tell them why, and maybe how Gollum is tracking them and why they can’t get away.

In the telling of the tale above… Legolas never did check the range.

“You shoot a prefect precise shot…. but the arrow falls into the water well short of your target. Its just out of range. Who or whatever was trailing you disappears below the waters and you lose track of their location.”

The shot should be beyond extreme range. Gollum isn’t stupid and he knows how tricksy elves can be. He’d also know how good elves are with bows… and he might even know that Legolas seems better than average even for an elf. He’d stay at maximum observation distance, and out of attack range.

So… how did Legolas see him ? His spot range is only so far after all. Well, Gollum did something that caused a light to reflect towards the PC encampment. It wasn’t the PC camp fire or any such that illuminated him, but rather the moonlight. You might even rule that what Legolas really saw was the water moving unusually near the log.

OK. So what about XP rewards ? The PC’s should be rewarded for figuring out it is Gollum, for figuring out how he’s tracking them, why they can’t get away. I’d assign a fixed XP reward for the encounter of between 250 and 500 for each part of the mystery they solve. If you are playing with higher level characters… then you might grant as much as 1000xp per piece of the mystery. Remember this is a task more for the players than their characters abilities… as such it gets no easier at high levels.

In this case, Legolas by shooting at Gollum, has prevented the party from finding out any of the above… so the PC’s gain no experience. If they didn’t know there was XP to be had by solving a minor mystery… well tell them as blatantly as your table style allows.

Finally always have a back-up plan. If Gollum is killed or otherwise prevented from destroying the Ring in the Mt. Doom scenes… then have another method ready to accomplish this. The mountain could start the earthquake thing. The ring might fall off of Frodo… or Frodo might fall to his death as Gollum would have. You may also have another of Sauron’s lieutenants get involved.

This is actually one big reason I really like the DM I’ve been playing with for the longest time. He lets his campaign world be totally fluid, so that it adapts to whatever actions the characters take.

That being said, this strip was totally hilarious. Always the perennial question; “How much XP?” ^_^

I know I shouldn’t say this in a room full of Tolkein fans, but if the characters had been a little more forward thinking like LegoLass here, we could have been spared the entirety of The Two Towers. Shields up!

BeckoningChasm: “Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.” How’s that for a shot across the bow?

…I think I’ve managed (with help) to totally de-rail the plot of every RPG I’ve ever played in. No matter how well a game is scripted, the plot outlined for all occurences, or how much the players might enjoy the story….sooner or later they are going to find a way to escape from the box. They can’t help it! About the best thing I’ve found to do as a GM at that point, is too suck it up and start making the game up as I go. Then things really get fun!!!

Sometimes things do get out of hand like this, but that does not mean that weird and unusual things can happen. (Like Boromer gets so greedy that he turns into a second gollum and Frodo does not want to kill him because he knows who “Gollum” really is).

Players often kill things they shouldn’t, but normally their second in command turns out to be equally as hard…..but thankfully you’ve described it as “think” it’s gollum, could just be an orc scout…..

Let’s see… using the D&D rules for NPCs, Gollum should be near-epic levels. He’s a few thousand years old, and has lived a life of danger and fighting that should be worth a few thousand XP a year at least.

Do you know the first Eberron adventure module, part of that Grasp of the Emerald Claw or whatever? There was a villain central to the plot who was a shapechanging magic user pretending to be a vampire. The PCs were supposed to figure he was much too powerful for them and attempt to surrender or bargain while he went on a long villainous exposition of his dastardly plans. If they did attack, he was supposed to cast Obscuring Mist and drink an invisibility potion to mimic the vampiric gaseous form ability. This is what actually happened:

Turning from his brainless skeletal servants digging in the cemetery, the necromancer faced our heroes. Red eyes glaring in his white skin, he smiled, revealing pointy fangs.
“Ah,” he said. “Look what we have here…”
“OH FUCK, A VAMPIRE!” Alim cried in a panic. He waved his hands and muttered something, and two little white balls of force streaked out to hit the villain.
“Ow!” the necromancer cried. And again “Ow!”
LX011 charged in as quickly as his heavy metal body would allow, bringing his enchanted longsword down on the necromancer’s shoulder.
“Ow!” the black-clad villain exclaimed. He muttered something and the area became filled with fog.
Ever-quick Sandefur decided this would be an ideal moment to find someplace to hide.
Meanwhile Aldemar voiced an imprecation to the Pantheon praying that divine force would hold the foul vampire in his tracks, but to no avail.
Alim could no longer see the dreaded foe. He sent his snake, with which he communed in arcane and eldrich ways, to seek him in the fog.
LX brought his sword around to strike again. Despite the fog obscuring his target, he felt his sword connect with flesh.
“Ow!” cried the now familiar voice of the necromancer. There was a strange clinking and glugging sound from the fog, and the vague form of the villain disappeared altogether.
Aldemar decided that the skeletal servants should be dealt with. She called on the power of the gods to disperse their blasphemous forms, and they shattered into fragments.
Alim could feel the presence of the vampire through his snake, but could not see to attack him and did not want to get too near the rather dim Construct still swinging his massive blade.
LX could not see the vampire but took a swing at where he would be if he had started to run away. Once again he felt his sword impact unseen flesh.
An eerie, bodiless voice called out from the mist: “Bastard!” Then there was the sound of a body hitting the ground.
“Cut its head off before it recovers, it’s a vampire!” the still panicked Alim called, dropping to his knees and groping around in the fog. “Where’s the head?”
LX011 probed around with his sword, finally finding an invisible form on the ground. He raised his arm, causing Alim to scurry backward, and brought it down with all his force, splattering himself and all around him with warm fluid. A brief and unusual glimmer of intelligence flickered in his metal and flesh head. “Something’s not right about this.”
Meanwhile Aldemar had managed to find the head and began sawing it off with her own sword. Alim bespoke a spell to detect enchantments and found a vague enchantment coming off the area where the invisible body lay. He started searching it and found his hands inside a warm body cavity, not unlike a freshly butchered pig. Thoroughly repulsed, he withdrew his arm.
Several minutes later the fog lifted and the body became visible shortly thereafter. All the heroes were covered in blood and gore. The headless body of the necromancer lay before them, with the head crushed beyond recognition by some warhammer blows LX had added to be on the safe side. Viewing the copious amounts of flesh and blood and reflecting on the ease with which he had been defeated, it started to occur to the heroes that perhaps he had not been a vampire, after all. Surely vampires don’t say ‘ow?’ Or have warm blood? And it also occurred to them that he had merely started to speak to them, giving no sign of attacking. Perhaps he had been about to tell them something useful?
Sandefur came back over, mouth agog. “What in the Abyss have you people done?”

You have to imagine our DM laughing until the tears rolled down his face during this. He later said that this was the most stupid NPC tactic and plot rail device he’d seen and the NPC deserved everything he got.

Tirgaya, all is forgiven, your lengthy scrivening is utterly diminished by yon Antiquated Tory.
I also happen to appreciate a lucid reality (um, D&D, I mean) check, such as you provided.
Alas, due to alignment issues I haven’t resolved, I MUST side with Evil Otto.
Dead Deagol, yes – Smeagol lives!

I think I played in that module… that was the campaign where one of the other PCs ended up freeing the elemental from an airship and setting the whole bloody thing on fire… we then decided that a little adventure to Xen’drik was in order, until that little incident blew over.

I have this RPG I’ve been beta-testing for a quarter-century, off and on (lately off – I just can’t seem to get into it again), in which I had a close friend who was confident enough to GM my game. So I rolled up a character, and we went at it. Okay, I *wrote* up a character (his stats), and then rolled the rest of the stuff as appropriate, which was cool. No, it’s me as a character, so the stats weren’t outrageous — the physical strength sucked, the wisdom sucked, but the dexterity and intelligence were acceptable.

anyway.

So here I am, armed with a $LIGHTSABER and a laser rifle, trying to go after this idiot in a Saab 9000 Turbo (white). I jump on top of the car.

“He starts to drive off.”

“I plunge my $LIGHTSABER through the roof.”

“It’s deflected. You fall off the car and he speeds off into the distance.”

“Okay, I roll and grab my laser rifle. I get a round of attacks — two shots–”

To Craig – that is how all our quests began when I did this stuff years ago. There was also a woman with a herd of poodles that diminished in ever amusing ways every time we arrived in town.

To Shamus – The way your characters act is just how we did, I’m getting all my old roleplaying mates to read this for happy memories. this strip in particular? I’ve only just stopped crying with laughter…

“Outstanding. How much xp?” Well, at least he cares about what’s important. I can’t blame him for killing the 1st thing he saw, though. Given the lack of monsters that they can kill, I’d be trigger-happy too.

That’s what I do. Make encounters with loose settings and create the map as you go, and it won’t matter where they go; the encouter (plot, etc.) still happens. Deliberately going the wrong way? Turns out the information you got was inacurate. Ignore the encounter? That’s fine, until you walk into the ambush encounter. Killed their employer? YAY! Now they get the city guard backup encounter I was saving! I recycle like this all the time, feeding it to them on the fly, and my players eat it up because there’s always something to do no matter how far off the map they go.

Also, I tend to warn them that if they go too far off the map they WILL run into things that are far more powerful than them, and if they get TPK’ed it’s their own fault. That usually keeps them from straying too far, unless they’re TRYING to get killed, of course.

Oh wow, flashback to a scifi campaign where I wrecked the DM’s story line with a lucky sniper shot to the main villain, who I caught monologuing. I think I killed the campaign, cuz we only met one more time after that…

*Laughs* This comic has hit every gaming session our groups have had thus far, as far back as I can remember. It doesn’t matter who’s DMing, or what members of the group have changed, it hits somewhere.

My parents have been gaming since I was around three or four years old, and my sister and I joined in once we were in our teens. I’m 26 now, and my sister is 23, and we still game with my parents, along with both of our husbands. *grins*

Our group made the DM scurry to change her outline once. We were in an old castle or tower (or something to that effect) and our DM (who was my mother, at the time) severely underestimaged the greedy gleam in the thief’s eyes.

She had set up a very elaborate puzzle/lock in one of the rooms. It was set off and started by a certain item, that once picked up, would cause the door to close and the puzzle to begin. You also needed this item to solve the puzzle, to get the door to reopen.

The thief promptly walked in the room, successfully nabbed the item and quickly scurried back out once the door started closing (successfully making all rolls, even at disadvantages), leaving three of the party members behind, in the now locked room. Needless to say, she had to do a little quick thinking, after much laughing at such dumb luck and derailing.

–Sorry so long! I don’t mean to be so winded! Anywho, I came across this site from a friend that said, quote, “This is way more than I've *ever* wanted to know about Dungeons & Dragons, but it's still pretty freaking funny… (be prepared to waste some hours with this),” endquote. I ::love:: the comic, and have forwarded it on to all of my gaming group members.

You know, forcing the players into a railroad plot is bad GMing. Great GMing is when you can go through the story while the players have the freedom do whatever the hell they want without breaking any of the GMs plans.

I keep wanting to call him “Leggy-lass”. This reminds me of one campaign I played in high school where my group was going through an “enchanted” forest that was filled with giant spiders. My entire group had basically been slaughtered or incapacitated in some way except me. I was holed up in a tree and making pot shots against the spiders. Several successful rolls in a row and I had wiped out the entire spider population. Even to a point of ridiculousness where my shots were so well aimed that I could sever a spider’s limb at unthinkable distances while in the most precarious of perches. It irked the heck out of my DM, but hey, I saved the whole group from certain doom. And they were his dice….

I once guest-played an old, weak healer in a group that got sucked to some chaos world. She got an extra-light magic crossbow, because she couldn’t handle a real one, and had nearly no skill points for it. ;-)
But when we at last encountered the evil overlord, she sent a arrow straight into his eye (d20, 100% luck, max. damage), so he died (or disappeared or the like).
Our GM only planned for some way to let us escape a bit wounded to our home world, but so the whole world collapsed, we had ruined his plans for a epic comeback of the evil guy (even if there are alway enough of them around…) and nearly died in the world’s collapse… ;-)

Beware of letting my bf get bored in the game. Bad things happen to the plot.

He has done things like: started his own army, young, by founding multiple orphanages; ignored the three local plotlines to chase after the distant one; robbed a bank (our mage motto: “great reality-bending powers, used for petty crime”); and similar hijinks.

Okay, these are all good. But this one made me fall out of my chair. This is something that our GM could never completely avoid. You always have to assume characters will have unplanned reactions with unexpected results. It was just such a departure that created our most legendary group to ever campaign.

That is so us… Our DM expects us to ruin the plot. And to ruin our own plans :(. Many’s the time we’ve tried to capture an enemy alive for information we desperately need, only to give up on that and just kill them when they inevitably run.
And I remember a once-off… I was a level 10 rogue (yeah, 3.5) set up as a sniper. It took one critical to hit the head vampire’s heart. That won us the battle. A night’s session ended after only an hour of play.